Nests Under the Eaves: Telling Paper Wasps, Yellowjackets and Bald-Faced Hornets Apart

By October the nests are at their biggest. A paper wasp colony that began in May with one queen can number in the hundreds, and the hornet nest that hung in a maple all summer may now be the size of a basketball. Fall is also when stinging insects get short-tempered, because the colony is at its peak and natural food is running thin. If you have spotted a nest on your house, in the soffit or under the porch roof, the first step is working out what it is. The shape of the nest and the look of the insect will tell you most of it.

Paper wasps: the open umbrella

Paper wasps build a flat or slightly domed comb with the six-sided cells in plain view, hung from a single short stalk. You find them under eaves, inside porch ceilings, in the corners of door frames, behind shutters and inside grill covers and mailboxes. The wasps are slender, with a narrow waist and long legs that dangle in flight. They are not looking for a fight and often tolerate people at a distance, but a nest next to a front door or a deck railing changes that, because someone brushes past it a dozen times a day.

Yellowjackets: the nest you cannot see

Yellowjackets are shorter and stockier than paper wasps, with a bright yellow and black pattern. Their nest is a closed ball of gray paper layers, and it is often hidden: underground in an old rodent burrow, inside a wall void, or in a soffit with a small entry hole. You may never see the nest, only a steady stream of yellowjackets flying to and from one point. Yellowjackets are the species most likely to be drawn to open soda cans and the trash at fall cookouts, and they defend a nest hard. Mowing over a ground nest is how many people discover one.

Bald-faced hornets: the gray football

Bald-faced hornets are black with a white or ivory face and markings. Their nest is a large, gray, football-shaped paper ball with one entrance near the bottom, hung from a tree limb, a shrub, a gable or the corner of an eave. The nest can grow to considerable size by fall, and the hornets guard it as a group. They can sting repeatedly, and a disturbed nest sends out a wave of defenders. Of the three, the bald-faced hornet is the one to respect most.

• Open comb with visible cells under an eave or ceiling: paper wasps
• Closed gray ball with an opening, or a hole with traffic in a wall, soffit or the ground: yellowjackets
• Large gray football hanging in the open, with black and white insects: bald-faced hornets

When a nest is an emergency

Most nests are a problem to schedule, not a crisis. Some are different, and these are the cases where calling the same day makes sense:

• A nest by an entry door, a walkway, a play area or a spot where people pass daily
• Anyone in the household with a known allergy to stings
• Insects entering the house through a soffit, vent or wall, or showing up inside
• A nest that is disturbed, damaged or knocked down and now has angry insects around it
• Stings that bring swelling beyond the sting site, trouble breathing or dizziness, which means calling 911 first

Resolve runs a 24-hour emergency line at (732) 527-5770, and the office is open every day of the week. A call at ten at night about a hornet nest over the front door is not an unusual one.

Why you should not spray it yourself

A can of wasp spray from the hardware store looks like an easy answer, and it is the way many people get hurt. Spray reaches a short distance, and the nest sits above you, often at the top of a ladder. The insects that are not killed on the first pass come out at once. A person on a ladder cannot get away from them, and falls from ladders are a bigger danger than the stings themselves.

Soffit and wall nests add another problem. If you spray the entrance of a nest inside a wall, the survivors can look for another way out, and that way is sometimes into the house. Moving or knocking a nest down is no better. Insects that return to a missing nest gather angry at the spot, and a nest with live insects inside can keep them in your yard for days.

What a professional visit looks like

A trained technician identifies the species, finds the real entrance, and treats and removes the nest with protective gear and the right equipment for the height. For wall and soffit nests, that also means checking where the colony was entering and closing the opening afterward so a new queen does not move in next spring. A Google reviewer wrote that Resolve took care of a large hornet nest on their house quickly and made sure it was safe and completely removed.

Wasps and hornets leave in the winter, since the colony dies off and only mated queens survive in sheltered spots, and the empty nest will not be reused. That is a good reason to leave a high, distant nest alone until it freezes, and the wrong reason to leave one at your front door. If you are not sure which situation you have, call Resolve Pest Management at (732) 527-5770. The Bayville office will ask a few questions, tell you whether it can wait, and quote the work for free if it cannot.